Ask HN: Moving from a business analytics/focused role into engineering? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Moving from a business analytics/focused role into engineering?

3 pointsn_parks1 comment

For the last few years, I think more and more that I have made the wrong career choice not being in software engineering.

I love building and making having built different side projects etc but I am largely self taught (although I consider myself fairly proficient) so have never considered this a formal career. My career has rather seen me in consulting, analytics and product management and being technically savvy has often given me an edge here. However, I am completely unenthused with business strategy of late and consider doing something a bit different.

While I recognize being a developer in a company would be different to developing myself (more formalized, slower etc), I would love to know if anyone here has moved laterally into a software development role without a Software Engineering background? Did you start over in your career or able to find some middle ground?

Not exactly the same, but I moved laterally from working in Marketing to working in Data. That meant going from managing Google/Facebook Ads in the UI/Excel to working with their APIs using Python/SQL every day.

I was fortunate enough to be able to make that move naturally at the same company I was already working in, solving some of the same problems I was already facing as an account manager. "Scratching my own itch" as it were.

While any role with programming is seen as glamorous from the outside, the actual work can consist of a lot of mind-numbing maintenance and glue. You don't get quite the same high that you do when working on new projects.

I have found that a lot of technical folks lack the business context to fully implement impactful solutions at their organization (outside of what's prescribed through tickets). On the other hand, business folks don't understand the nuances of the technology, so they set unrealistic expectations and goals of the software engineers. Since you're coming from the business strategy side, I think you have a unique opportunity to incorporate coding into your roles without making your career work 100% about writing code. Can you identify what challenges are being faced (now and in the future) by the business? Can you personally solve those challenges with automation and software? Can you lead a team to develop solutions for those challenges? Can you effectively tie business objectives to the solutions being developed? If the answer is yes, you can find a nice little hybrid niche that makes you invaluable to any company you work for.

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